The House: Why does DIY keep happening to me?

Is anyone else out there convinced that bedside tables are out to give them gray hairs and lay them in an early grave?  Because I swear that's what's happening.  It's like they're my own version of crossing the plaines, only I don't get to die of cholera before I need to ford the icy river.

The problem is that bedside tables are either hideous or outrageously expensive (or both), and exactly none of them is the right height for whatever bed you're trying to pair them with.  If you need tall bedside tables (as I did for the master bedroom), all you'll find are toll-painted cabinets that look like they came from oldlady.com (I'm not even going to check if that's a real website because obviously it should be, and you know what it would sell) and you'll be forced to buy some lovely tables that are four inches too short and make you want to gnaw off your arms and legs.  AND THEN, when you're looking for shorter tables for the guest bedroom, suddenly everything will be too tall and you'll end up buying some steel factory tables because if you can't get what you really want why pay a fortune, right?  Right, but then you assemble them and realize you're going to spend the rest of your life wishing that they were three-and-a-quarter inches shorter.

See what I mean?  This is probably what the Bible meant
when it talked about the vale of tears

But then an epiphany on the drive home from work:  Home Depot exists!  They have tools that cut things!!  They're open until 9pm!!! [trumpets, cherubs]

I started at the rental counter for power tools because I wasn't messing around.  After I told the guys what I was doing ("Hey there, I need to chop off a bunch of steel table legs, so I'll take the biggest metal-cutting saw you've got."), they chuckled and sent me over to the hack-saw aisle, probably thinking I would be less of a menace to society if I wasn't wielding something that plugged in.

I bought my tool:

The finer the teeth on the saw, the better for cutting steel.
They catch less while you're sawing.

. . . lay my prisoner down . . .

. . . measured the offending member . . .

. . . and HACK!

Amputation complete

It was incredibly easy and went very fast.  So fast, in fact, that I may or may not have enthusiastically sawed off a chunk from a leg that I'd already shortened . . . .  Whoops!

Who needs duct tape when you have clear packing tape?

Fortunately, I had foreseen that sawed-off edges would be rough on the hardwood floor and had invented an ingenious way to prevent the damage:

Sticky stuff and felt-covered feet!  I stuck a ball of sticky stuff onto the spike of the foot,
and then I shoved the sticky ball into the open end of the pipe.

Voila.  No floor damage here.

In no time at all I had shortened both tables by exactly 3.25 inches, putting them at the height that I'd wanted all along.

Perfect!  Now I just need to mount the light fixtures above each table.

If only all my decorating problems could be solved with a hacksaw and some sticky stuff!